When RTV Noord speaks to Huizinga, he is on his way back from Germany to Emmen. He has visited a number of agricultural machinery manufacturers. Including Kalverkamp near Osnabrück, inventor of the impressive Nexat, a kind of supercombination that can sow, mow or harvest a fourteen-metre-wide strip of land in one go.
The device has been tested on Huizinga’s land and he is considering buying one. Because of course he wants to invest, says Huizinga. His future is in Ukraine, Russians at the door or not. “One way or another you have to move on,” he states matter-of-factly.
Next week, during the spring break, Kees, his wife Emmeke and their two daughters will go to Ukraine, which they see as their homeland. Kees regularly commutes back and forth, Emmeke stays more in Emmen, where both their daughters go to secondary school.
At the end of March, after the quiet winter period, real farm life starts again for Kees on the farm, about a two-hour drive south of the capital Kiev. It is now gray, gray and wet and the country looks deserted. “Because of all the misery, it has of course just been a disaster year,” says Huizinga, who was born in Hellum. “But from a financial point of view, there is not much going on for our company. The company is stable.”
Outside the war zone in Ukraine, life and farming goes on as best it can. Not much is earned and the prices for fertilizer and diesel are sky-high, but both are still available. “We can just move on and everyone continues to work. That is also good for the employees, it gives them stability.”
All things considered, last year was actually not too bad from a business point of view. “Arable farming was not good, especially because of the weather. And the prices were bad. We didn’t earn anything on grain, corn and oil, but the milk and vegetables saved us.”
“Dairy farming actually went quite well, the factory always collected all the milk properly. And the prices were reasonable. The vegetable cultivation has even done very well, with a normal yield but with high prices.”
The real pain for Huizinga and all Ukrainians is not in some lost earnings. Emotionally, the damage is countless times greater. Forty of its three hundred employees are at the front. Two of them have died, one is a prisoner of war. Three of the local farmers from whom Huizinga leases land also died.